John C. Williams, an economist and longtime Federal Reserve official, is a top candidate for president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, according to two people familiar with the search process.

Mr. Williams, 55, now leads the San Francisco Fed, where he has been president since 2011. If he is appointed, Mr. Williams would succeed William Dudley, who announced in November that he planned to retire this summer after nine years in the job.

Leading the New York Fed would be a significant promotion: The position is one of the most influential within the Federal Reserve system, and arguably the most significant economic policy position not controlled by President Trump.

The president of the New York Fed, uniquely among the leaders of the 12 regional reserve banks, has a permanent vote on the Fed’s policymaking Open Market Committee and serves as the committee’s vice chairman. The bank also plays a crucial role in overseeing many of the country’s largest financial institutions.

Mr. Williams’s selection is not yet final. By law, the president is chosen by a subset of the New York Fed’s board of directors and must be approved by the Fed’s Board of Governors in Washington. A person familiar with the search process said neither group had formally voted on Mr. Williams, and cautioned that the situation could change. Representatives for the New York and San Francisco banks declined to comment. In mid-March, the New York Fed said it had narrowed its search to “a handful of final candidates.”

News of Mr. Williams’s likely selection was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

Mr. Williams and Mr. Dudley have similar résumés in some respects: Both have doctorates in economics and held advisory roles in the Federal Reserve system before rising to their current positions. Mr. Dudley, however, also spent time on Wall Street as chief economist for Goldman Sachs. Mr. Williams, by contrast, has spent nearly his entire career at the Fed and has never worked in the finance industry.

Left-leaning economists and activist groups have criticized the New York Fed for having too cozy of a relationship with big banks and have urged the search committee to look for candidates who would be independent from Wall Street. Nonetheless, progressive groups were sharply critical of Mr. Williams’s reported candidacy.

“It’s deeply disappointing and a missed opportunity,” said Shawn Sebastian, director of the Fed Up campaign, which advocates policies that promote full employment. “This process began with a lot of talk from the Federal Reserve about diversity — diversity of background and diversity of experience.”

Mr. Williams’s regulatory record will be important, given the New York Fed’s role in Wall Street oversight. One of the major banks in Mr. Williams’s backyard, Wells Fargo, engaged in aggressive sales practices that resulted in millions of accounts being opened without customers’ knowledge. The San Francisco Fed has recently pushed for major structural changes to Wells Fargo, and the Fed last month announced tough penalties on the company.

On monetary policy, Mr. Williams has been an influential voice at the Fed, where he has recently pushed for the central bank to rethink its 2 percent inflation target and to consider a new system in which policymakers would sometimes allow prices to rise more quickly to make up for periods when inflation was lower. Had such a policy been in place during the most recent recession, the Fed might have been even more aggressive in its efforts to stimulate the economy.

But at the Fed’s meeting last week, Mr. Williams voted along with his colleagues to hike interest rates for the sixth time since the financial crisis, and he has generally supported the Fed’s current policy of gradually raising rates to keep a lid on inflation. He has repeatedly said that the United States is at “full employment,” meaning that joblessness is as low as it can get without triggering inflation over the long term. Liberal economists argue that weak wage growth and strong hiring suggest there is room for the labor market to improve further.